This wasn't clear from the comment thread context. I was as confused as the person you replied to until I read this comment.

I wasn't aware Google ever offered a permanent option. But I wouldn't use it in any case, since that would require having a Google account - and therefore give them permission to track me (more).

For what they're worth, and while they're not perfect, keyword searches from the browser are a useful alternative.

For instance, this search:

Tie this to a specific keyword or character (the number 1, for instance) in a bookmark. Then type:

and the search will return results that exclude google.com.

I haven't tried in ages, but it used to be possible to define multiple terms separately. So it might still be possible to do something like:

So if you type:

you'd get all search results, but typing:

you'd get everything about blubber except from mucklucks.com.

Cute article, but fuck, that's a lot of white-washing.

We'll see if they have the cojones to post a critical comment.

'I can call you Betty, and Betty when you call me, you can call me [redacted]'

[citation needed] What gives you this unique (supposed) insight into Adobe's motivations?

As others here have mentioned, Adobe is still making money hand over fist for flash licences from companies who have legacy software that requires it. I'm much more inclined to believe that Adobe is quite happy making money from software they're no longer maintaining.

Firefox: "Default for all websites: Block Audio and Video"

Yet youtube still plays videos with sound automatically.

So... you tell me:

Because the native solution does not work as advertised.

Never underestimate the asinine nature of Adobe. Remember that this is the company who criminally prosecuted Dmitri Sklyarov under the DMCA for unravelling their ROT-13 implementation.

They don't let silly things like "facts" get in their way.

If they're trying to collect debts in the US, or from someone who is living in the US, the law absolutely does apply.

Enforcing the law can be a bit tricky outside the country. But your friend should have called the Attorney General in their state, and the FCC and FTC. The initial creditor would have been under fire, as well as whoever decided it was a good idea to outsource the collections extra-nationally. The AG could have weighed in with the credit reporting agency as well.

It appears that you have a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms "publisher", "free pass", "completely irresponsible", "anti-social", and "bullshit", as well as having not read TFS.

The Times have editors who are employed by (and under the direct control of) the corporation, and who preview content before the content is published. The English-language Wikipedia alone has tens of thousands of volunteer editors, none of whom are under corporate control. More than a billion edits have been made to more than six million articles since 2006.

To hold Wikipedia financially responsible for the content of every single one of those edits would be insane.

Wikipedia is not a "publisher" in the sense you're thinking. They provide a venue, some basic rules, and a format to follow; they cannot be reasonably expected to police every single change that happens in that venue. (I challenge you to review every single change made to Wikipedia for accuracy, truth, format, tone, and content for just twenty minutes. (That's roughly 2,300 edits. Can you manage that in 20 minutes?)

Wikipedia did not get a "free pass". I'm guessing that just defending this lawsuit to this point cost them well over $10,000, if not twice that. There's nothing "free" here.

Wikipedia was not "completely irresponsible". From The Fucking SUMMARY, which you apparently did not even bother to read before spouting off:

Wikipedia could be considered the antithesis of "anti-social"; it's the largest, most accurate, and most collaborative compendium of human knowledge ever assembled. How that equates to "anti" social in your brain is... unfathomable.

So to conclude, it's clear that your understanding of all of these fundamental ideas means that your application of the word "bullshit" is also completely incorrect. What you said, nearly all of it, was itself "bullshit".

The internet as we know it would not exist with Section 230. It may not be perfect - not everyone who hides behind it is Wikipedia (and I'm looking at you, facebook, and similar cunts), but it's better than anything else we've come up with so far.

The Wikipedia entry on Duverger's Law has some interesting information on the difference between the US and Canadian effects of FPTP. (I didn't realise that the parties in Canada are relatively separate on the national and provincial level. I think forcibly divorcing the national and state parties in the US would be an excellent idea.)

There are two additional things to consider, IMO:

1) the United States has been doing FPTP for nearly 250 years, where Canada has only been a fully independent nation for 73 or so. So there have been 3x as many iterations for things to settle in the US. (If Canada were to follow an analagous timeline, the equivalent of the US' Republican Party would have only been founded in 2013, and not won a major election until 2019, if my maths are correct...)

2) the difference between a Parliamentary system (where the PM is chosen from the representative government) and the directly-elected US President is considerable. And the existence of the Electoral College, and its historically near-absolute lack of accountability, drives the final nails into the coffin of any non-two-party system.

...or how as often as not, also has a pair of runners in it.

(I told that bastard playing dead works better. Turns out bears like a good chase.)

This is the crux of it, right here. CCPA is an enormous first step in the right direction in the US, even with its limitations. (Sure it's not but perhaps 1/10th of what GDPR is, but it's still a positive move.)

Until the US congress get off their collective arses and pass legislation that shifts ownership of personal data back to its subject, rather than its collector, the situation will not improve. Sales of personal information should be opt-in, or at least require notification to the subject including 1) from whence the current possessor received the information; 2) actual useful data about a) who the current possessor is and b) the actual purposes for which they've collected and are using it; and 3) actual, useful data about a) who the receiver is and b) the actual purposes for which they're receiving the data. And those processes need to be regularly audited and have proper consequences for defying the law.

I would love to tell someone which ads I would consider watching. But they have no accountability to me, so the first thing they'd do is run off and sell that information to someone else. So I block every advert I can everywhere I can.

Haven't seen that one yet, but after watching his performance in Spanglish, I can believe it. He does appear to truly be an actor rather than simply a shtick funny man.

I'll check out Uncut Gems this week.

TikTik is owned by a Chinese company, and is therefore a de facto source of intelligence information for the Chinese government.

TikTok should not be installed on any phone, but especially one whose location, etc. would be useful to the Chinese government/military.

The one - and ONLY - time I've ever been successfully phished, it was (in large part) because the attacker gained access to a legitimate domain without the owner noticing, and set up a webserver mimicking the MS federated auth login screen on the host's server.

The FQDN was correct, and the cert presented matched, so everything looked proper. (And since somehow everyone and their dog have decided to use embedded iFrames again (despite the x^y vulnerabilties they present), even the auth redirect looked "right".)

Fortunately I realised what I had done immediately afterward and was able to change my MS auth (required by my company) immediately, so no damage was done. (Thank %diety%.)

I now routinely enter my credentials incorrectly the first time on any web auth page. For any attack except those relaying the credentials in real-time, this causes a false positive. It's not perfect, but it would have worked that day, and is one more layer to help.

MS' disclaimer that this is an impractical threat model is not only incorrect, it's asinine.

Typo or not, I nominate "depriotituze" as the neo-cromulence word of the year. <3